Blatter Re-elected as President of FIFA

President of the Federation of International Football Associations Sepp Blatter (see the picture) has been re-elected as the head of FIFA having four years tenure.

Even president Blatter suffered from harsh attacks of `reform element`, he emerged as a winner of consecutive presidency by defeating, with a landslide, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Issa Hayato who was supported by `reform element` in a presidential election of the 53rd FIFA regular congress held at Seoul Hilton Hotel on May 29.

At the meeting, 197 member countries except North Korea and Eritrea among a total of 199 member countries have attended, and president Blatter has won an absolute majority support by getting 139 votes, 71.3 percents of the effective votes, over president Hayato who got only 56 votes. The number of votes cast for president Blatter was more than `two thirds of the effective votes` (130 votes), which is a standard to overcome to be a winner in the primary ballot.

Accordingly, president Blatter will be the president of the organization until a congress to be held right before the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany. President Blatter, 66 years old as of this year, is a citizen of Switzerland, was active in an armature football league in Switzerland, and assumed the FIFA presidency in 1998 after going through a job of secretary-general of the FIFA.

Additionally, FIFA decided to resume soon the activities of the Internal Audit Committee (IAC) at the meeting in the day. The committee has been suspended by a unilateral measure of president Blatter in late March.